Early Morning Thoughts

Good morning. I got to my office super early today at 8 am. Sometimes, I like to just have some alone time to think and reflect. My office starts at 10 am and my officers and interns will usually trickle in around 9.45 am. We start later than the usual 9 am because every Monday and Thursday, the officers stay until 10 pm; Monday is community service night and Thursday is for INVOKE Malaysia phone bank activity.

This morning, I have been thinking about corporate tax issues. At breakfast my super brainy wife and I were discussing the super charged US and Western stock markets (due to Trump’s recent massive corporate tax cut). I don’t believe that US corporations that are now paying almost zero tax by using tax havens, will be incentivised enough to stop the practice. As such, I am extremely skeptical that the recent corporate tax cut will generate social good (i.e. increasing the working class wages) via trickle down economics. I am also skeptical that it will result in US corporations closing down of their cheap factories in developing countries and create new jobs in US. These tax cuts will most likely result in the shareholders and CEOs buying more private planes, luxury homes and yachts.

From pondering this big issue, my mind wandered to something smaller. I was thinking about my poorer constituents in Desa Mentari. I had really enjoyed the late dinner event in Block 3 Desa Mentari last Saturday and wondered why is it that the poorer communities tend to be relatively more generous than the richer neighbourhoods.

This led me to re-read some litreature in my mini library on poor economics. Can we do something relatively cheap (since my office has no meaningful community budget) to give impact to urban poor children? On page 91 of Think Like A Freak, the writers told a story of researchers finding a link between poor eyesights and poor academic performance. This is something that I will assign my interns to look into this week.